Hi Just wanted to say this is a great forum and after 15yrs of fish keeping shared with my brother, i've decided to join a forum and asked the "experts" for advice. I'm what you probably call an intermediate beginner, as i was doing this hobby for 13 years of my life and i'm only 25.
I was lucky enough to have only 3 deaths in the countless aquariums and different set ups my bro and i have over the years including Oscars, devils, fancy goldfish, silver arowana, convicts, jack dempseys, angels, pirranahs etc he was more of the expert, i just kept pond fish and non aggressive fish. I've recently picked back up the hobby 2 years ago - although i didn't cycle the tank - the fish didn't die off ( 3 koi's in a 65 gal (36x18x24) that grew from 4 inches each, to 1foot and half each which prompted me to trade them back in to the LFS (Big Als). I now have a mix community tank with 5 clown loaches (3-4 inches each, 2 angels,5 blue rams, 20 neon tetras,8 shultze corys, and one red tail shark and yellow spotted plec, 3 red dwarf gouramis, and 4 swordtails ( all juveniles except the plec, rams, corys, and gouramis and tetras), in the same 65 us gal tank for about 4 months now ( don't freak out - but i have crushed coral substrate with some bog wood that looks very good i must say, but i know i'm not to use crushed coral unless for african cichlids. And yes i know the clowns can get up to a foot long and a school will be too big for my tank. My question is, and this is why i say i'm an intermediate and don't plan things out; When i decided to get new aquarium 2 years back, as the last time i gave up i ended up selling all my stuff but kept the stand, i just purchased any new 65 gallon aquarium and to my surprise when i got home i had a 48x18 stand.
I'm now so "enthused" with my current inhabitants that i wanna keep if not all but most of my fish to adulthood which would mean getting a larger tank. I saw a 110 gallon tall tank that are my stand dimensions (46x18) and plan on purchasing it along with the right size stand for my current 65 gallon (36x18x24 aquarium) My current tank has 3 filters ( the largest emporium outside power filter, and tetratec 400 and an eheim 2128 cannister fileter - i needed powerful filteration for the kois!)
Anyways i've never practiced "cycling tanks" in the past, i'd just wait 2 weeks after set up, with simple de-cholorinator and just slowly stocked and never had a fish die on me within a year. But since i'm older now and instead of using dad and brother's money, i use my own - so i wanna do it right and not rely on luck. If i purchase this new 110 gallon tank and take the eheim cannister from my 65 gallon - will this cycle it in 2 weeks? I do plan on buying proper substrate for the species of fish i have which leads me to my next question.... I wanna use live plants for the species i have, what kind of "natural substrate" and things do i have to do to make this successful with healthy plants?
Please help me out, but don't tell me that my loaches will still outgrow this 110g and that - when my fish outgrows, i'll worry then, either i buy bigger tank, or trade them in and get juveniles again. And yes both me and my "expert bro" always had nasty habits of over crowding but we were very dedicated in cleaning and maintaining all of our tanks. The old inhabitants of the 65 gallon ( 48x18x18) was 1 2 ft silver arowana, 1 1 and1/2 ft plec, 1 1 ft albino oscar, and 1 1foot devil - which laid eggs several times!) before my brother finally made the difficult decision to trade them back in to LFS after having them for 6 years since he had to go to med school, and i've decided to take a small break from fish keeping since i was entering my "party years".
l.
Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Ca Fai
What you will need to check is the spec of your eheim filter. If you are almost doubling the size of the tank, you need to make sure the filter can cope with the increase amount of water. If not, you may need to upgrade the filter. If you do upgrade the eheim to another eheim, you could always move across the old media which will help too.
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